The End, DVD review

Rammed with jittery jump-cuts and trendy shaky graphics, The End is a
cliché-ridden depiction of East London gangster life.

By David Cheal

3:18PM BST 24 Jun 2009

The End

15, Kaleidoscope Home Entertainment

Anyone familiar with Monty Python’s Piranha Brothers sketch about East End gangsters (“He nailed my head to a coffee table … but I deserved it!”) will find it hard to suppress a chuckle while watching The End.

First-time film-maker Nicola Collins’s documentary about gangsters, crims, enforcers and heavyweights – among them her own father, Les Falco – almost sinks under the weight of East End gangland clichés and mythologies: in their smart suits and big cufflinks, these geezers talk about the unwritten code which states that grassing someone up – even your enemy – is a no-no; about “characters”, “rascals”, knuckle-dusters, guns, wounds, boxing, scars, prison (yes, people really do still call it “bird”); about kids respecting their elders, about the way the Krays did a lot of good for charity, and the fact that the East End ain’t what it used to be, make no mistake.

The clichés don’t end there. The film is made, inevitably, in gritty, grainy black and white, with jittery jump-cuts and trendy shaky graphics. Inevitably, too, given Collins’s personal interest in the people involved, it’s an uncritical affair. There’s a certain amount of reflection and self-recrimination, but the crimes committed by these people remain curiously victimless.